[Updated] Xbox Live Back In Business, Outage Due To Routine Maintenance

Update #2: All Xbox Live services are back online (though it appears that Minecraft issues still persist). In a statement provided to Game Informer, a Microsoft representative informed us that the outage was due to routine maintenance. Some individuals had claimed that hacking brought the service down yesterday. Microsoft assures us that this is false.

Update #1: Microsoft has sounded the all-clear with regard to sign-in issues. However, it seems that other parts of the service are experiencing problems. According to Microsoft's Xbox Live status page,

"We are aware of an issue members are having sending and receiving messages, seeing friend's statuses, sending or receiving game and party invites, and accepting friend requests on Xbox LIVE. We are currently working as fast as we can to get this issue fixed, thank you for your patience during this time and we will update you with any new information we receive."

[Original Story]

My own attempts to sign into Xbox Live have proven difficult, and the official Xbox support Twitter account tweeted that is working to resolve the issue.

Times like these are always hilarious. I play my Xbox 360 nearly every night and cannot remember anything this bad happening any time in recent memory. Yet everyone seems to take this moment to point out how bad Xbox Live is. Grow up people.
Both PSN and Xbox Live have issues. Technology isn't perfect. One small thing can cause a huge cascading issue. Xbox Live has an issue, yet Earth is still rotating and life goes on. Get over yourselves. *** happens.

Sucks, but it should be resolved by tomorrow. I mean, I can't imagine anything worse than Sony being hacked, and PSN being down for nearly a month. Still, makes me glad that most PC games ditched the GFWL service as of late...last thing I want to put up with is not playing my game because the damn thing is down :P.

In addition to this, the ability to download your profile isn't working as well. During the sign-out problems yesterday -- before I knew there was an issue with LIVE -- I tried deleting my profile and redownloading it. It didn't work. It still isn't working, even though other people are able to log into LIVE.